I spent my youth singing in choirs and I love the idea that in a choir, each individual can add their voice to all the other individual voices, each person sharing what they have to give, to create something magnificent that cannot be created alone.

This past holiday season, in and around the usual activities like trimming the tree, cooking for my family and wrapping presents, I did something I’d never done before — I spent a considerable amount of time developing a case study to be used as a learning activity in a university classroom.

Further to my presentation at McGill University’s School of Physical and Occupational Therapy last year, I was asked if I could help develop a case study or “Professional Reasoning Seminar” that could be integrated as a learning activity along with my presentation. I thought it was such a wonderful idea to develop a scenario whereby students would read a clinical write up of a case involving a young girl recently diagnosed with a pediatric stroke, then read the parent’s perspective of the situation as I’ve described it in my book, and then, hear me talk about the themes in my book in a way that I think is most relevant and empowering to young people who will soon be joining the workforce.

In terms of the writing process in this case, initially I found it terribly difficult to look back through my old files to revisit the specific challenges we faced when my daughter was first diagnosed and write about it in a very clinical way, without the themes of hope and perseverance that I’ve derived from our experience since then.

But, as the hours went by and I saw the case study taking shape on my computer screen, knowing what I know now, how much hope and potential there was even when I couldn’t see it, my discomfort slowly turned into a quiet sense of triumph — that fifteen years later we have come so far and I’ve somehow found the strength to turn what was such a difficult period in my life into something that has the potential to make things better for other families in the future.

This week, I had the privilege of speaking to a new group of students and afterwards, the opportunity to watch and answer questions as they worked in groups to develop strategies and solutions for the young patient in question. To some, it may seem strange that I would spend part of my Christmas holiday working on turning what was a personal period of crisis so many years ago into a case study. But, having the opportunity to start the new year seeing my efforts used so constructively was a gift indeed...!

Today I was very grateful to have the opportunity to make a presentation to a group of students at Marianopolis College, one of Quebec’s top pre-university colleges here in Montreal. In comparison to my presentation at McGill’s School of Physical and Occupational Therapy earlier this year, the group of students today was much younger and much more diverse in the sense that they have not yet chosen an area of specialization. I wondered what I might talk about given that focusing on the challenges of navigating the rehabilitation network in this case was unlikely to be of any interest or relevance to them.

In the end, I decided to focus on the importance of staying open to the possibility that something good might happen even when faced with well-informed expert opinions to the contrary and a mountain of seemingly insurmountable challenges. I talked about how when my daughter was first diagnosed, I was also told that she would likely never walk and that there was nothing I could do about it. But, that by working with her and encouraging her just the same, she eventually did learn to walk, to the point that now, she is free to imagine her life full of activities as it might otherwise have been, with minor adaptations as required.

At the end of the presentation, a student came up to me and said that the story of my daughter and me as I had just told it, was the story of her and her mother. And, just like me, when she was a baby, her mother had been told that she would likely never walk. But, just like me, her mother had worked with her and encouraged her just the same and there she was, so many years later, having just walked across the classroom to come and talk to me. The similarities in our experiences were incredible, right down to the fact that her mother had spent an entire summer helping her learn to ride a bike, just as I have done with my daughter, to the point that now, she too is free to imagine her life full of activities as it might have been otherwise, with minor adaptations as required.

I didn’t have any particular expectations when I set out to write about my experience in the context of this project. I only hoped that it might be helpful to someone in some small way, in a way that I wish I could have been helped when I needed it the most. But as it turns out, this project continues to be helpful to me too in so many surprising ways. The warm response from the students today who have their entire university and working lives ahead of them and very little in common with what I have lived, and at the same time, the immediate understanding and compassion I felt with the student who approached me to say her story so closely resembled mine, remind me that there is always much to be learned and much to be appreciated, even when you’re not expecting it.

I am very grateful to my dear French-speaking friends who are always so willing to answer my endless series of questions on the nuances of the French language, and to Cécile Latizeau for her thoughtful revisions and corrections over this past year.

Besides accomplishing something that was really important to me, I can easily say that this exercise was an exceptionally effective way to improve my French!